Back in the 1960’s cars had mechanical carburetors and ignition, even manual chokes, and for me they were sometimes a source of problems — if they were adjusted just right, the car ran well, but the next day it might not because the weather changed a little, or the airflow got a little obstructed, and the engine sputtered or failed to start. Sometimes it flooded with too much gas, but if you let the car sit for an hour or so to “dry out” it would start then. It wasn’t as predictable or reliable as with today’s sensor-equipped models.
As I age I find my own mind acting like this, some days are productive, some a wash, and some have failures where the best I can do is try again another day. Right now I work in InfoTech, but not in management, and the level of detail required becomes difficult to manage as an older person. Most of my coworkers are at least a generation younger, some almost two generations; although we discuss the work itself, there is no one I can talk to with similar experiences. In my small local Bahá’í community I can watch how people deal with aging and learn from them, but they don’t work in IT.
Lately I’m puzzling over a new experience, and not just in the workplace — sometimes people seem to react overly well to me and I think back the next day and wonder what in the world I did that was so great; other times people will look at me in disgust and I think to myself what did I just do wrong? That’s usually a good time to quit for the day and try again, but sometimes even after reflection I can’t figure out what happened, thus it’s harder to learn from.
One thing that’s obvious is I’m too isolated, and so I talk too much in some situations. That takes time to work on, but I should have more time in a few months.
Using the analogy that our heart is meant to be a mirror, Baha’u’llah says:
Cleanse thy heart with the burnish of the spirit (Hidden Words #8)